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As a nation, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the famous civil rights march spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr. in August 1963.

We can breathe a sigh of relief that King, and not a hot-
head from either camp of the divide, was the most articulate spokesperson of a seminal period in American history.

I was a lad of 15 at the time. The national civil rights demonstration finalized by his speech seemed to me just another in his litany of cross-country activities. Little did I know that it gave legitimacy and respectability to what had heretofore been a movement led by and opposed by seeming radicals from the fringes of middle America.

If one searched a specific moment when the unevenness of the 1960s began, it would be that hot, muggy day when civil rights protesters from around the country and, indeed, the world listened as their leader proclaimed that freedom in the U.S.A. was not what it was purported to be.

The end of that era occurred when Americans left Vietnam in 1973, bedraggled, defeated and humiliated. Perhaps at no other time in recent history was our legitimacy as a nation so tested both at home and abroad — at home by persons of African heritage, and abroad by those of Asian. Our Euro-centeredness no longer worked. We found ourselves on a new playing field punctuated with the likes of Angela Davis and S.I. Hayakawa.

Should the government or the president follow the laws the Congress has enacted or not?

Simple question, right? Then why hasn't President Barack Obama cut off the millions of dollars in foreign and military aid to Egypt, a country that has had its duly elected government deposed by a military coup or decree?

The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, a law reinforced in the 2011 omnibus bill, states that “U.S. funds will not be made available to any country operating under a government achieved through a coup d'état or decree in which the military plays a decisive role.”

Why haven't the taxpayer-provided funds been stopped?

We appear to have a president who made a bad decision and is loath to admit he was wrong. He is thumbing his nose at Congress, making himself more powerful than the rest of the government and the American people. The coup occurred in July! He was wrong about the Arab Spring, wrong about how to deal with Arab nations, wrong about his foreign policy and its influence on the world stage and, now, wrong about the crisis in Egypt.